What's New: Seagate Confirms Infected Drives

Seagate has confirmed that some of its Maxtor-branded hard drives were shipped with a password-stealing trojan on the drive, but disputed the Taiwanese government's theory that Chinese agents were involved. Seagate says some Maxtor Basics 3200 drives were infected at the factory. The trojan would attempt to steal passwords and relay them to two Chinese web sites.

The Taiwanese security service discovered the infected drives and claimed that China was behind the trojan in an attempt to gain passwords to sensitive information. Seagate says that only "game-related" passwords were stolen.

Seagate says that only about three hundred infected drives were sold, mainly in Taiwan, but will post a 60-day trial version of Kaspersky Labs' antivirus software on its web site for customers who purchased a Maxtor Basics 3200 drive.